I spent a rainy Monday at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)
today to view the Matisse exhibit and have lunch at the
bar of The Modern. After Matisse, I was ready for something
photographic, something different, and The Original Copy:
Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today was perfect.
According to the MOMA Exhibit Web Page, this exhibit
“presents a critical examination of the intersections between
photography and sculpture, exploring how the one medium
has become implicated in the understanding of the other.
Through a selection of nearly three hundred outstanding
pictures by more than one hundred artists from the dawn
of modernism to the present, the exhibition looks at the
ways in which photography at once informs and challenges
our understanding of sculpture.” (MOMA Exhibit Web Page)

The concept of studying photographs of sculpture is brilliant,
as the two genres, analyzed as one, are an ever fascinating
aesthetic. Constantin Brancusi’s own 1919 photo of his "L'Oiseau
(Golden Bird)", photographed onto gelatin silver print,
looked almost like a shooting star at midnight. The lighting
contrast was astounding. Edward Steichen’s “Midnight—Rodin's
Balzac", 1908, on pigment print, gives the viewer the sense
of being alone, in a dark garden, with the imposing figure,
Balzac. In a fourth step, I photographed my favorite works
in the exhibit, and Man Ray’s 1926 “Noire et blanche”, on
gelatin silver print, radiantly contrasts a silky white
model with a dark African mask. Peter Fischli and David
Weiss’ 1984 “The Three Sisters", a chromogenic color print,
features five ladies pumps, each a different color, configured
as a sculpture in space. I also photographed their 1984
"Outlaws", also a chromogenic color print, of two well-worn
chairs seeming to be in battle, leg to leg.

David Goldblatt’s 1990 “HF Verwoerd Building, Headquarters
of the Provincial Administration, Inaugurated on 17 October
1969, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State”, a gelatin silver
print, showcases imposing government buildings with a strong
male statue of an obvious leader of state. A close-up of
the chiseled stone head of a female statue, taken by Barbara
Kruger in 1981, is untitled, but the photo reads, “Your
Gaze Hits the Side of My Face". It’s stunning in black/grey/white.
My final photo of the hundreds of photographs on exhibit
is of one taken by Man Ray in 1918, called “Integration
of Shadows", a gelatin silver print. It’s of a dark sculpture
against a white wall that seems to be made of bowls, rods,
and clips. The photographed shadows enhance the sculpture
itself. Check out www.moma.org
to plan your visit.